I’ve felt the weight of broken men against my chest. I’ve watched as they cried until they had nothing left, collapsing into my arms and letting me guide them into a rocky slumber. I’ve steadied the shaking hands of terrified children. They were small, but the fear in their eyes was big, and it threatened to swallow us both whole. I let my heart break in silence, doing my best to give those kids every ounce of my warmth, never letting my smile waver, because that was all I could do for them. I’ve touched the bruised faces of women who did nothing wrong. I’m only trying to help them, to clean their wounds, but it’s hard, because no matter how slowly I raise my arms, I can see their spines clinch, their eyes narrow, and even the weight of the air around us becomes a mass of chains, so I can never have a delicate enough touch to give these women even a moment of peace. And I’ve watched my own life collapse from the pressure of wanting to only save others. I knew where I was heading, but I was determined to save them, at least one of them. If I could save even one of them, I could have saved myself… I know I could have done it, I just needed that proof… but maybe that’s why I couldn’t do a damn thing for any of them, because I was never sincere. I wanted to save them, but only for my own selfish reasons. So of course I couldn’t help them. So of course I’m still breaking. It all makes perfect sense. In the end, it was all for nothing. Everything I did was for absolutely fucking nothing. I should have known better… I shouldn’t have fucking bothered… I should have trusted in my own judgement and saved myself this pain… I should just fucking die.

Sleeping in is a luxury far removed from my reality. My bed still calls to me every morning, giving the utmost effort to hold me down. But this isn’t an act of kinship with my sheets, rather my sheets are hellbent on smothering me into nothingness. I’m laying facedown, surrounded in a sea of tumbling cotton, and every attempt from my lungs to dispel the CO2 coating my throat is pushed straight back down. In a matter of seconds, the warm air I’ve been swallowing has become a solid mass of fiery coals, cooking my flesh from the inside out. The only chance for relief would be to welcome the idea of sleep, but I know that with sleep comes dreams, and my dreams have been sifted time and time again until I was left with but a single scene. That scene also haunts me while I’m awake, but when I’m awake I can numb my feels through things like work, drugs or alcohol. In my dreams I can’t leave my own head, so it hits me full force. And it hurts. God, it hurts so fucking much. I know it’s just a dream, but it still breaks me. Every night it breaks me, and I’m forced to put myself back together in the morning. I have responsibilities, so I can’t waste any time. I know I’m not putting things back exactly where they should go. I know I’m ignoring my crumbling edges. I know nothing will get better for me if I don’t stop living like this. But this is all I know. This is the only way I know how to stand back up.

It only takes a few seconds, or maybe less. Perhaps it’s just a blink, a flash of the sun through a pinhole in air-dried cotton sheets, or a shooting star racing towards the center of a black hole, erupting at the bend in our universe, where all events lose focus, lose time, lose everything except for the overwhelming lack of your presence… and suddenly an empty universe feels crowded, compared to waking up in a bed without you…

Could anybody please explain to me where it was I fucked up? I’ve burned through every memory, but it wasn’t enough to smoke out the inciting incident. I went from a warm soul to a body consumed by wildfire, and I can’t be sure why I set myself on fire to begin with. Everything was perfect, right?

We had each other.

We had love.

What else could I give you?

Why wasn’t I good enough?

You’re gone, but every time the truth comes to the front of my mind, I shove it down, down, all the way down, right through the ground beneath me. When I started, the truth barely reached the back of my throat. 6 years later, and there isn’t an ounce of me that doesn’t hide the truth. Every footstep creates an echo of an echo, so it’s impossible to tell where I started from, and I’ll never reach the end…

You never loosened your grip. Even though I stopped trying and resigned myself to this bottomless pit that was my life, you didn’t falter. I don’t know how many times I fell down, but each time felt like I was falling further than the last. At some point I stopped looking up, because there was no point; I was in a hole so deep that the Sun couldn’t find me.

But you pulled me out.

I tried to push you away. I tried to pull myself away. I jumped off of bridges and buildings, airplanes and orbiting satellite arrays. I emptied my lungs and sank to the bottom of the Mariana Trench. I stripped away all of my clothing to feel the ice of Mount Everest on my bare chest. Time and again I broke my body in a sad attempt at symmetry; matching every mental breakdown with equal physical pain. I didn’t care about consequences, I just wanted to suffer.

But it wasn’t enough.

Cuts healed. Broken bones could be mended. The physical pain never lasted… but my head… all of the thoughts in my head… they never stopped. I just want some fucking peace…

It’s never as bad as I think it is, until I take another look in the mirror. My stomach transforms into a pretzel as the realization “I can always get worse” really begins to sink in. The old scars are so faint now that if I avoid bright lights nobody could even see them. I still make an effort to wear long sleeves at family gatherings, but if I slip up it wouldn’t result in the immediate recognition of my bullshit habits. But those are only the old scars. Those date back 15 years. They have a long history, but I don’t remember any of it. See, I have the scars, even if they are barely visible, I still have them. Yet I don’t have any of the feelings that allowed me to kick and scratch my way into a lifetime of swimming with my shirt on. I can’t recall a single moment, just a general sense of wanting a way out. And I think that might be what I hate the most. Of all the memorabilia I have accumulated over the years, it’s my scars that remain. I won baseball tournaments, performed in spelling bees, got some of my first poems published when I was 10. I bowled a game over 200, managed to get an Eagle in the District Golf Tournament, and even found the courage to say “I love you” to my highschool girlfriend, and I meant it… I had all of that happen…or at least I think I did… After all this time I have nothing left from those memories but the memories themselves, and when they play in my head, I feel like I’m watching somebody else’s life. I can see it all, in fantastic detail, but I can’t relate to anything I’m seeing. I can’t connect that person I see to the person I am. The only thing I can connect from the past with today are the scars. I can draw a line from each one in order, using how faded they appear to judge how old they are. That map is extensive, traveling the distance from my left ankle up through my right shoulder, ending in a faint crescent on the front of my neck. And I am still adding more lines, treating my skin like a highway, finding the spots where the lines have worn thin and taking the time to add a fresh layer of paint. But this road can’t go on forever. At some point repainting the lines won’t be enough, and the road will be slated for construction. Everything will have to be stripped away, so fresh pavement can be laid, to provide a better path for the future. And I’m certain it’s my time. My road is at its end, and I need to stop redrawing lines and just rip the whole fucking thing to shreds.